Is because the right to bear arms is there to arm the public in a way so as to throw off a tyrannical government if the need ever arose

...which is a pretty futile exercise now - you'd need a personal missile defence shield and who knows what else to even stand a chance of lasting 5 minutes.

I'm with Acurasquirrel on this one - the number of kids injured or killed each year in the US by guns is extremely worrisome. Within 24 hours of you reading this sentence, it is statistically probable that another 13 children have died.

Finding the balance between the right to defend one's property/hunt/target shoot and the right of children to not get killed by guns is obviously too tricky to get right.